November 13, 2007

The Last - or most recent - Supper

On Sunday, after finishing up with our convening at Northwestern in Evanson, IL, I rented a car and drove to Round Lake, which is about 50 minutes northwest of Chicago close to the Wisconsin border.

My father had been Police Chief here for about 30 years spanning the fifties through the eighties. The population in  the early days was as low as 150. The old Milwaukee Railroad stopped there then. The newly named Metra Transit offers daily commuting between Chicago and Round Lake - unheard of as a concept when I was growing up. Chicago might as well have been Mars!

The Iron Horse Diner, I have mentioned here before, where my mother sat at "her" seat at the end of a communal table, the pleather/plastic chair playing host to a revolving group as my mother had coffee usually from 6 am through about 10:30 am - and then she'd be back for lunch, mock fighting with John the owner and helping Patti, friend/waitress/confidante, make coffee filter setups and to count her tips.

I had let my remaining family know that I would be back to get the last of my mother's belongings out of storage in my Aunt Marie's garage. It's been two years since we hurriedly boxed up what we knew would take time to go through and this the first time that I have had a chance to go get it.

Cousins and cousins kids and wives and husbands are all there for an early Sunday supper. My Aunt has made roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, a jello I will name Sunshine Jello. The vegetable casserole, my aunt worries, might not be right: she bought cream of mushroom soup WITH garlic instead of without. (It turns out fine!)They ask for information on my sister and my brother, and we try to call up Donna and Paul and Sienna in Mexico to see what news there is on the adoption front and to just say hi. No answer.

The family tells me of their medical woes. I tell the family of my medical woes. There is a football game on the TV, and its mostly men folk watching. The woman folk - and me! - sit around the dining room table and talk a bit about everything and nothing. When my mother was living, she would have been there in "her" seat, smoking her non-filtered Camels. Now, the smokers have to go to the garage - something my aunt could never get my mother to do.

The talk and the meal are just as it has been for decades - with the kids growing older and the more new kids. It is just me from our side of the family now, and save for Sienna, trapped across the border because this adoption won't go through, there are no little ones on the DiMuro side of the family from Illinois. We all have dogs named after people.

We hint at past family transgressions,the black sheep cousin, the born-again relatives, the dead, the living. How who heard what about whom from whats-her-name.  We talk about baby showers, funerals, weddings. The illnesses are swept over quickly. I miss my sister at these gatherings, because she can be quite irreverent - and we do our best in her absence.

I am grateful my aunt has gone to the trouble of doing all this- this is really more like a holiday dinner. Comfort food with multiple meanings.

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